Fun With Dick (Sans Jane) Morris

On Facebook Wednesday, Julia Sweeney coined the phrase “schadenfreudically speaking.” It applies perfectly to this wonderful video of Dick Morris explaining on Tuesday why Romney was going to win in a landslide and why all the polls and the media were finally going to be shown as the charlatans they are.

Since 325 votes means Romney would have won by a landslide and assuming President Obama picks up Florida and gets 332 votes, does that mean he won by a landslide?

Reginald Selkirk

That map reminds me: Romney did not carry his home state of Massachusetts (or his other home states of California and New Hampshire), or his birth state of Michigan. Ryan did not carry his home state of Wisconsin.

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Romney used to own a house in Utah, but sold it in 2009.

blindrobin

Dick Morris is wrong >90% of the time. Soooooo if Dick predicts, bet the other way.

Doug Little

Who Knows?

I think Obama has already picked up Florida. Obama is up 59,000 votes (0.7%) and a Romney adviser has conceded, although it’s not official yet.

davidct

He even sounds as if he knows what he is talking about. Just further proof that “As seen on TV” carries little meaning – a bit like the word “natural”.

Doug Little

What is interesting to is that according to Mr Silver’s post election analysis the tipping point state of the election was Colorado not Ohio. Obama won CO by about 4.7% which is a pretty comfortable margin of victory. He didn’t need FL OH or VA to win the EC. This is a massive problem for the Republicans.

More seriously, though, two percentage points is not a landslide. The Electoral College system gives an appearance of a much more dramatic victory than is actually the case (and, of course, as in 2000, it can actually reverse the popular vote ranking –though, being the case that the 2000 election was decided by a very special Supreme Court decision, perhaps that’s not the best of examples).

We should get rid of the electoral college. The exalted Republican notion of local control is absurd when it comes to counting votes and it should be done everywhere in the same way using the same rules. And we also need electoral reform so that it does not reinforce the two party system.

I was talking with someone over the weekend who said we needed a third party victory to shake things up. That is not enough.

If a third party ever becomes significant enough to be able to win, the way the system is set up the equilibrium will simply shift so that either the Republican party or the Democratic party will shrivel and it will become polarized again and settle unto two parties once more. It will then become indistinguishable from the current configuration despite the different labels used.

We know this because of history. Mostly, though, we also know this because simply having a very significant third party doesn’t change the underlying dynamics at play (mostly the whole issue of “wasting one’s vote”). That is, while it is conceivable that we could see some chaotic period it should eventually settle down into a two party dynamic.

At what point do we stop calling these ‘tards “pundits” and start calling them “blowhards?” And when exactly do the real media (I’m excluding Fox “News” from this) stop listening to them?

When pundits go out on a limb, as they often do, and offer predictions about the future, they are often wrong more often than not. At the very least they are no more often right than than anyone else is likely to be.

Media pundits are just not very good at predicting the future and never have been. Dick Morris is not special in this regard. He’s simply more spectacularly wrong in this video and his wrongness is delivered with impressive confidence.

And, of course, his explanation is that he was guessing rather than predicting based on anything as mundane as evidence:

“I goofed, I made a mistake. I undercounted the minority turnout and women and young people, single women. I thought that the 2008 turnout was a fluke. I think on your program many times I said that if the turnout is what it is in `08, then the polls are accurate and Obama is going to win. But they are not.”

What makes it even better is that Romney lost by more than Morris predicted Obama would lose by: 206 (actual loss for Romney) vs. 213 (Morris’s ‘predicted’ loss for Obama).

Dennis N

We should get rid of the electoral college.

I agree, and had Obama won the electoral college but not the popular vote, I would still feel the same way.

If there was no EC this cycle, there is no reason to think that the popular vote count would be what it was this past Tuesday. The candidates would have campaigned differently (which is the real reason we need to abolish the EC, not because the EC and pop vote could contradict), and the outcomes would be differently. If the well-run Obama campaign had focused nationally against the inept Romney campaign, I believe they would have won handily in a the popular vote. It was well known that the Democratic campaign focused like a laser on electoral votes, and they got a landslide in them.

typecaster

What makes it even better is that Romney lost by more than Morris predicted Obama would lose by: 206 (actual loss for Romney) vs. 213 (Morris’s ‘predicted’ loss for Obama).

Wait a minute. Morris overstated Obama’s electoral total? That must mean that he’s part of the media conspiracy! Holy, FSM, that’s a conspiracy with REALLY mad skills.

He Who Shall Not Be Blamed

It was amazing to me to see just how the right wingers managed to dismiss Occam’s razor leading up to the election – i.e. the reason the polls were showing more Democrats than they expected might possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps, because THERE WERE NOW MORE VOTERS IDENTIFYING AS DEMOCRATS!

No, that was unthinkable! It must be polling bias. By all of the pollsters. They then went to hunt down something, anything, any little hint at all, that would justify their gut feeling. “Seek and ye shall find”, indeed! Dick here sought, and he seem to have found some info from Gallup that confirmed his pre-conception. Thus everything else could now be ‘adjusted’. And his world-view was righted once again.

All very convenient – until reality kicks you in the balls! They seem to be lucky so far. Sometimes reality will go ahead and stomp on your kidneys and kick you in the head while you are down from the first blow.

Every Morris said was true, he simply made the Freudian slip of saying “Romney” when he meant “Obama”; it could happen to anyone. For instance, why did the media play this as a squeaky close election when it was clear all along Obama was going to win?